Translate into a different language

Friday, September 22, 2017

"Without reforms to the higher education sector, Thailand’s drastic
population drop in recent years could affect funding and quality of
universities, education experts are warning after the latest round of
university central admission exams saw a declining number of
applications" writes Suluck Lamubol.

Photo: CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY OF THAILAND via YouTube

Some 80,000 Thai students nationwide applied for the central admissions
examination compared to 100,000 last year. Some 110,000 places are
available in the higher education system this year – already reduced
from 156,000 available places two years ago.Rapid expansion of universities, increased competition among education
institutions and population decline are being blamed the gap between
higher education supply and demand, experts say. One expert has even warned that three quarters of Thai universities are at risk of closure, particularly as the decline in the number of school leavers has coincided with a government policy of allowing in foreign branch campuses in special economic zones.Arnond Sakworawich, a lecturer in actuarial science at the National
Institute of Development Administration in Bangkok, told the
English-language Bangkok Post newspaper that the policy would put many Thai universities in danger of shutting down. Declining birthsHigher education expanded rapidly during 1980s due to an increase in
population where over one million babies were born each year. However
this has dropped to an average 600,000-700,000 babies born each year in
recent years. Currently, there are total of 170 higher education
institutions in Thailand. According to 2015 statistics from the UN’s population division, Thailand
ranks seventh in the world in terms of rapidly-aging population. The
country’s economic planning agency the National Economic and Social
Development Board also estimates that by 2040 the school-age group will
drop to 20% of the population, compared to 62% in 1980. The central examination acts as a clearing house system with
universities considering students this year based on their exam scores.
However, the exam has become less popular as fewer universities are
involved. The decline in central admission system numbers was expected as it is
also attributed to the direct admission that took place earlier, said
Suchatvee Suwansawat, head of the Council of University Presidents of
Thailand. More students were applying directly to universities, which
have their own criteria for recruitment that is often considered to
favour more privileged students, rather than through the central exam. Private providers could be hitNonetheless, the drop in central exam applicants has been very high.
Private universities have voiced a concern that they could be wiped out
from the market if trends continue. Private universities have been
lobbying the Education Ministry to ease regulations so that they can set
up branches in neighbouring countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar
and Vietnam, for example. With the exception of Vietnam, Thailand’s
Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN neighbours all have
rapidly growing youth cohorts. Saowanee Thairungroj, Rector of the University of the Thai Chamber of
Commerce and president of the Association of Private Higher Education
Institutions of Thailand or APHEIT said that since public universities
receive subsidies from the state, private universities – which currently
account for 20% of national education provision – are at a
disadvantage. “If you do not have well-established funding sources for the education
business, it is possible that you would have to be shut down or
downsized,” Saowanee told Prachachart Thurakit, a Thai language
business newspaper, last October, adding that already 120 staff have
taken up the university’s early retirement programme brought in to
reduce the budget spending.Read more... Source: University World News

Kinders enjoyed singing with their animal friends in “Good
Day” as they learned what the animals really say when they get up in
the morning. They added their own verses, experimented with high and low
voices, and played rhythm sticks to the repeated patterns in the song.
They were also jamming to

“Bluegrass Jamboree” as they found new ways to
make sounds with their rhythm sticks.

Lou Wilson’s first grade students tuned up their listening
ears as they played “Step the Beat” while following all kinds of silly
rhyming directions. They moved to the polite game, “How Do You Do?”
while comparing steady beat to a repeated rhythm pattern.

Second graders reviewed quarter note, eighth note and half
note rhythms with the poem, “I Had A Loose Tooth.” They loved adding
instruments to specific word patterns in the poem and figuring out which
rhythm pattern they were playing.

Third and fourth grade students have been busy with rhythm
reviews. Working with partners, they tested their knowledge of note
values, and their movement skills as they played and sang a “Welcome
Back to School” game. Using these skills, they moved on to following a
musical score and creating their own movements to “Give It a Rest”.
Rhythm rounds started the year for the fourth grades as they performed
“School, School” as a two-part round with movement, then with unpitched
percussion instruments. Each line of the poem used note values that were
a review to the students and challenged them with new 16th notes.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

"It can be said that Phyllis Edamatsu is a tiny woman with a very large presence, particularly when she’s playing music" according to Jeff Brown, reporter at the Dover Post.

Photo: Phyllis Edamatsu

Edamatsu
is director of Delaware State University’s research, planning and
analytics office, and an adjunct mathematics professor at the school.
However, she sheds her scholarly mien whenever she takes up her favorite
instrument, the accordion.

She’s been playing since the age of 8 and is a member of several professional groups.

Edamatsu,
who always had a fascination with music and musical instruments, began
learning the bellows-driven instrument because her family, living in
Spokane, Washington, didn’t have room for a piano.

“At the time
our living room was too small for one,” she said. “Later on, my dad
built onto the house and so my sisters were able to take piano lessons.

“By that time I was pretty comfortable with the accordion and didn’t want to switch.”

‘Teased’ “The
parents of one of my closest friends in grade school had a nightclub,
and they had a friend who was an accordion player with her own band, the
Gay Rancheros,” Edamatsu recalled.

At the time, the band leader,
Lucille Taylor, was just starting to teach the accordion, she said.
Edamatsu saw Taylor perform at a school PTA meeting and was hooked.

“My friend and I became Lucille’s first students,” she said. Because
Taylor could not carry the accordion during her pregnancies, she
switched instruments and ended up teaching Edamatsu’s three sisters when
they learned the piano.

As her confidence grew, Edamatsu began
playing at school meetings, churches, and talent shows. At one time she
played duets with a partner whose appearance and choice of instrument
was just the opposite of her own.

“We were teased a lot,” she
recalled. “She was a big farm woman who could pick up bales of hay, but
who played the piccolo. And there I was, barely five feet tall, carrying
around an accordion.”

When Edamatsu went off to college, her accordion made the trip as well.

“In the dorms, my house mother would let me practice in the luggage storage room,” she said.

Learning lessonsEven
though Edamatsu has been playing for years, she still works to hone her
skills, making the 90-minute trip almost weekly to take lessons at the
Acme Accordion School in Haddon Township, New Jersey.

The school was founded in 1948 by Stanley Darrow and his late wife, Shirley.Read more...

"Twice as many adults now use the internet on a smartphone than do on a
desktop computer, as smartphones have become the most popular device
for going online at every hour of the day, according to new research" continues Netimperative.

Photo: Verto Analytics

Verto Analytics, a research company that tracks which devices nearly
5,000 UK adults use to go online, showed that smartphones account for
57% of people who go online, whilst traditional PCs account for 27% and
tablets 16%.

Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, Verto Analytics’ CEO, said: “Mobile’s dominance
at every hour of the day is a change from recent years when desktop PCs
tended to be the most popular device for going online during the middle
hours of the day and in the middle part of the evening.”

Smartphones are at their most dominant between 8am and 11am when they
account for 63% of people online – three times as many as are on a PC.
PCs tend to have the largest share of the online audience between 1am
and 3am (38%) but their highest share during normal waking hours is 29%
between 6pm and 11pm. Tablet’s share of the online audience is greatest
between 10pm and midnight when it accounts for 19% of people online. Read more...

The origin of the symbol zero has long been one of the world's greatest
mathematical mysteries. Today, new carbon dating research commissioned
by the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries into the ancient Indian
Bakhshali manuscript, held at the Bodleian, has revealed it to be
hundreds of years older than initially thought, making it the world’s
oldest recorded origin of the zero symbol that we use today.

The surprising results of the first ever radiocarbon dating conducted
on the Bakhshali manuscript, a seminal mathematical text which contains
hundreds of zeroes, reveal that it dates from as early as the 3rd or
4th century - approximately five centuries older than scholars
previously believed. This means that the manuscript in fact predates a
9th-century inscription of zero on the wall of a temple in Gwalior,
Madhya Pradesh, which was previously considered to be the oldest
recorded example of a zero used as a placeholder in India. The findings
are highly significant for the study of the early history of
mathematics.

The zero symbol that we use today evolved from a dot that was used in
ancient India and can be seen throughout the Bakhshali manuscript. The
dot was originally used as a 'placeholder', meaning it was used to
indicate orders of magnitude in a number system – for example, denoting
10s, 100s and 1000s.

While the use of zero as a placeholder was seen in several different
ancient cultures, such as among the ancient Mayans and Babylonians, the
symbol in the Bakhshali manuscript is particularly significant for two
reasons. Firstly, it is this dot that evolved to have a hollow centre
and became the symbol that we use as zero today. Secondly, it was only
in India that this zero developed into a number in its own right, hence
creating the concept and the number zero that we understand today - this
happened in 628 AD, just a few centuries after the Bakhshali manuscript
was produced, when the Indian astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta
wrote a text called Brahmasphutasiddhanta, which is the first document
to discuss zero as a number.

Although the Bakhshali manuscript is widely acknowledged as the
oldest Indian mathematical text, the exact age of the manuscript has
long been the subject of academic debate. The most authoritative
academic study on the manuscript, conducted by Japanese scholar Dr
Hayashi Takao, asserted that it probably dated from between the 8th and
the 12th century, based on factors such as the style of writing and the
literary and mathematical content. The new carbon dating reveals that
the reason why it was previously so difficult for scholars to pinpoint
the Bakhshali manuscript’s date is because the manuscript, which
consists of 70 fragile leaves of birch bark, is in fact composed of
material from at least three different periods.

Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, said:'Today we take it for granted that the concept of zero is used across
the globe and is a key building block of the digital world. But the
creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from the
placeholder dot symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of the
greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics...

Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, said: 'Determining the date of the Bakhshali manuscript is of vital
importance to the history of mathematics and the study of early South
Asian culture and these surprising research results testify to the
subcontinent's rich and longstanding scientific tradition. The project
is an excellent example of the cutting-edge research conducted by the
Bodleian’s Heritage Science team, together with colleagues across Oxford
University, which uncovers new information about the treasures in our
collections to help inform scholarship across disciplines.'Read more...

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

"China's One Music Group hit Indiegogo back in 2015 to get its smart piano learning system
over to the US. By following app-controlled LED lights, the company
promised to have students playing a tune in minutes" notes Paul Ridden, dedicated newshound pursuing the latest bleeding edge tech for New Atlas.

The One Piano Hi-Lite LED learning strip has been designed to sit at the back of any 88-key pianoPhoto: One Music Group

But if learners
already had a piano at home, the One system meant that they'd have to
stump up for another. That potentially expensive issue has been solved
with the launch of the Piano Hi-Lite, an LED light strip that can sit at
the back of any 88-key piano keyboard and light the way to learning.

The year after the successful Indiegogo campaign, we got to try out the portable version of the One Piano system
for ourselves. We found that though it did get us off to a flying start
with the basics, learning to play with any proficiency would still
require hard work and a good deal of commitment.

Where
the original systems illuminated actual keys on the keyboard itself,
the Hi-Lite is a blocky strip that's laid across the keyboard of any
88-key piano that students already own or have access to and LED light
points lined up with keys – much like Ken Ihara's PianoMaestro in fact.

"Through
the great successes of our product line and classroom program, we
identified a large group of potential customers that already owned a
piano at home but wanted to experience the modern instruction The One
provides," said the company's Ben Ye.

Like
the original One system, the Hi-Lite strip is controlled by an app.
It's connected to a smartphone or tablet running The One iOS/Android app
over micro-USB and includes sheet music, video lessons and games.Read more...

"You’ve likely heard of a lot of buzzing in the corporate world about Blended Learning
and aren’t quite sure how or where to start with this concept. A vast
majority of the research done with Blending Learning pertains to the
K-12 educational space" according to Jack Makhlouf, Founder / Chief Learning Architect at ELM.

Photo: eLearning Mind

In the past decade, lower education has led the
trend, which is only recently catching on in the corporate space as moremillennials enter the workforce.
What we’ve done is reframed Blended Learning in a corporate context and
basically given you a link-rich document with everything you need to
know about Blended Learning.

The Blended Learning Definition and Debunking Some Common MisconceptionsBlended Learning
is the method of effectively combining online teaching with traditional
offline, face-to-face instruction in order to provide the learner with a
deeper, more meaningful learning experience. This sounds simple, but
it’s surprisingly complex. To harness the power of Blended Learning, we
have to challenge all of our assumptions about the educational
environment and re-architect it in a novel way for the modern learner.

Supporters of Blended Learningbelieve
that Blended Learning helps learners go deeper into the material, and
gives them a more meaningful and transformative learning experience.
Blended Learning lends true transparency to the learning process by
opening up communication between the learner and instructor. Rather than
crudely sticking two different methodologies together, the entire
system has to be picked apart and blended together homogeneously into
something novel.

Thoseagainst Blended Learningthink
learning should be extreme: devoid of technological distractions or
absent of face-to-face interactions. For them, technology is a
distraction and isolates learners or conversely, face-to-face learning
is boring and redundant.Common misconceptions about Blended Learning
are based on a failed understanding of just how flexible and new it
really is. One right media for eLearning doesn’t exist (more on that
below). By offering a wide range of options on the online learning side
and having full engagement on the offline learning side, where
instructor and learner alike are interacting with the technology,
Blended Learning becomes a powerful tool.

Why Blended Learning Has Everyone Talking: Top 3 Benefits of Blended LearningIn the past decade, teachers at
higher and lower educational institutes have organically adopted Blended
Learning as a meaningful learning tool in and out of the classroom,
really modeling what is just now catching on at the enterprise level.Blended Learning’s success is owed to three main benefits:Read more...

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Take a closer look below at this guest blog by DrSimon Gallacher, Head of Student Programmes, the Nuffield Foundation.Here at CASCAID we are committed to continuously provide
careers guidance to help support young people in identifying their
future, education, training and career goals.

Photo: CASCAID

Statistics from CASCAID’s most recent careers report identifies that
STEM knowledge and skills are becoming increasingly important in order
to pursue that dream career. To help young people on the path of career
exploration, CASCAID are pleased to introduce The Nuffield Foundation’s
Research Placements to help students gain valuable experience boosting
their opportunity and skills.Make the numbers work!Few things in life are as predictable as articles and headlines that tell us the world of work and jobs is changing. A recentarticle in the New York Times
noted that ‘jobs that require a combination of math and social skills —
like computer science, financial management and nursing — have fared
best in the modern economy’.In addition, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) has stated that ‘in the context of massive info flows
and rapid change, everyone needs to be able to “think like a scientist’. The Scottish Government has also been setting out its view that ‘all of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is underpinned by Mathematics, which includes numeracy’ against a backdrop that regularly reflects the UK’s need to improve the numeracy levels of its graduates and citizensmore generally.So if the modern economy requires scientific thinking (for which
numerical skills are essential), and work placements enable informed
study and career choices, how might we combine them to empower young
people? This is a question the Nuffield Foundation has been addressing
through its student programmes – Nuffield Research Placements and
Q-Step.Shaping and stretching research skillsNuffield Research Placements
are 4-6 week summer placements for school or college students who have
just completed the first year (or are in S5/6 in Scotland) of a post-16
STEM qualification. Students need good GCSEs/National 5’s (or
equivalent) to apply (grade B/new grade 6 or above), including
mathematics, English and a science. We award bursaries to eligible
students from lower-income families, as well as reimbursing travel costs
for all students.Our students tell us that the opportunity to participate in a
placement really helped them to feel they had made a good choice about
what to study at university and in some cases really made them re-think
their choices. They also say that it gave them a chance to test out
their skills and interests, meet amazing people carrying out real
research projects and, in some cases, helped them review what subjects
to aim for.Read more... Source: CASCAID

Here's how you can score a tuition-free MBA
by Ruth Umoh, Reporter for Leadership at CNBC.com.

Photo: Shai Reshef

"Higher education can be affordable, and accessible and high quality," Shai Reshef tells CNBC Make It.

Photo: CNBC

The average MBA tuition costs between $55,000 and $68,000 a year, according to U.S. News. The average debt for new grads at some of the top business schools can range from $59,000 to over $120,000. But at University of the People, you can score a tuition-free MBA with little to no debt, says founder Shai Reshef."Higher education can be affordable, and accessible and high quality," he tells CNBC Make It.In 2009, Reshef officially
launched University of the People, the first tuition-free, accredited
online university. Immediately after launching, Reshef says he was
swarmed with top educators who wanted to partake in his business.The concept is simple. The university
is completely run by volunteers, from the professors all the way up to
the provost, who volunteers from Columbia University, says Reshef. The
school also boasts volunteer professors and advisers from notable
colleges like Oxford, Harvard, Duke University and UC Berkeley.
Currently, the university has more than 6,000 volunteer professors,
Reshef says.Meanwhile, the number of
interested students has risen each year. When the online university
first launched, the school had 500 students. In three years, the number
of students jumped to 10,000 and Reshef believes that it will double by
the end of this year.The school first began offering tuition-free
associate and bachelor's degrees in business administration and computer
science. "We started with both of the most in-demand degrees that are
most likely to help students find a job," says Reshef.The university later introduced a
health science track and then a graduate business degree in 2016. "The
MBA is our fastest growing program," Reshef says. That's not surprising.
According to U.S. News, a new MBA grad can earn up to $164,000.Reshef says he founded
University of the People because there are over a million people a year
who are qualified for higher education but can't attend due to factors
like cost.In his 2014 TED Talk titled an "Ultra-low-cost college degree," he says that he wants to
democratize higher education "from being a privilege for the few to a
basic right, affordable and accessible for all." His speech has since
amassed over 4 million views.Read more...

Monday, September 18, 2017

In today’s technologically charged business world, organizations must
quickly adapt to emerging technologies or risk being left behind.
Technology is necessary to remain competitive and at the forefront of
change.

As more training programs become virtual and learning moves
beyond the event itself, a transformation to digital content delivery is
essential to support today’s workforce.

VitalSource writes in the White Paper, "According to Training Industry, Inc. research, approximately 91 percent of organizations currently use digital content in training initiatives, and 40 percent are planning to refresh or upgrade their e-book or reader platform in the next 12 months. It is little wonder why organizations have shifted toward a digital mindset. In a world where we have access to so much technology, the learner now expects every experience to be immersive, interactive, and most importantly, engaging."Download

Contact me

About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.